I've had many strong feelings regarding I Am A Hero, ever since I picked up the first volume on a whim after seeing it for years, being recommended constantly and having it haunt library shelves while passing by. Those feelings lasted to the very end of the series, and those who have read any of I Am a Hero know how fascinating and troublesome having strong feelings about this series is. But after having some time to reflect on everything, and to think about the journey that it led myself as a reader and its characters down, I'm ultimately happy with everything, in a way that I can say it's a remarkable piece of literature that stands out against all its peers with a deft, brutal regard that few other authors and artists are able to capture.

To begin, and put most simply, I Am A Hero is a zombie thriller. With years of the zombie trends of the west behind it, this series is a fusion of classic zombie tropes, unique and new views on what zombie fiction can be, and harnesses the best the genre has to offer while blending it with familiar manga tropes and unique Japanese sensibilities to help make a story that's truly unique amongst its contemporaries.

I Am A Hero spends the majority of its first arc with no zombies. No threats. Not much of anything really. It's all about contextualizing what normality is for our protagonist, Hideo Suzuki. He is troubled, he's a huge otaku, and he's a deeply idyllic if not a bit self-conscious soul. We learn about him, his weird mood swings and tendencies of seeing hallucinations with some sort of mental health problem similar to dissociative identity disorder, and learn about all his various relationships with his romantic partner, co-workers, and the various parts of the world that surround him in the midst of the sprawl of Tokyo.

It seems all simple, and plain, almost boring. This is intentional, a very slow burn that leads into the inevitable, unavoidable conflagration of any good zombie thriller: that literally everything is about to crumble around Suzuki. In a land of moral niceties, and politeness, and law abiding, the fabric of everything that people know as correct is going to be stripped away, and the series is going to test everyone's acceptance of the new reality versus their desire to hold on to what made Japan unique before the apocalypse. Despite this happening in a million other zombie stories throughout media, something about the setting of Japan, and the odd character dynamics of the various people the story introduces brings a new context to things that makes sure the story feels fresh.

I also would be remiss to mention the female lead Hiromi. She really brings a lot of heart and soul into the series. And while it's best to let her express herself in the narrative through her own actions and statements, the level of emotional attachment and passion her presence injects into the series is unparalleled. Despite Suzuki holding own as the central protagonist, many may argue that Hiromi is actually the star of the show from beginning to end.

When the zombies hit, I Am A Hero doesn't hold back. If what you're looking for is freaky, high-octane zombie apocalypse storytelling, this series has you covered. Zombies run at full-tilt, upping the danger factor in the scenes of actions. Zombies are also often so mindless and crazed, that they act in ways that are actively bizarre and horrifying. We might be scared to sprint non-stop for 3000 meters, because we know we'll be injured, but a zombie will run the same distance and keep going, even if it's ankles rip at the joints. Zombies also remember their past, and mumble sweet somethings in their bloodlust. There is something just downright creepy about a store-clerk zombie grumbling "ARIGATO GOZAIMASU" with a mouthful of hair and flesh. Moreover, the level of violence and gore is refreshingly beautiful if downright disturbing. Zombies don't care where or how they bite you. Your arm, your leg, sure... Your neck? Your actual face down past the eyebrow? It doesn't matter to them, you're still food, or at very least a vector for infection.

And without going any further into describing both the zombies themselves, and where the narrative takes them, I Am A Hero doesn't rest on its laurels once it gets up to speed. Every time you feel comfortable with the story, the author adds in a new complexity. Zombies will do things you didn't expect, horrific and unexpected scenes of violence will blindside you, characters will act in the most gut-wrenchingly awful ways you can imagine and yet you can perfectly imagine it as logical in the context. And as the narrative develops, it continually evolves, over and over again, until the "new world" created by the apocalypse almost begins to resemble an alien landscape from the humble origins it once came from.

Which is about the time that I need to discuss a crucial thing mention to anyone who has already read the series. No review of I Am A Hero can be complete without it, but people who haven't experienced should skip this part of the review until you have the entire experience under your belt. Put simply,

This all beings said, with any criticisms that can be raised from things that should be left unmentioned til the end of this wild tale, I Am A Hero is nevertheless an immaculate read that I've come to cherish. It's a story I've thought about almost daily since I finished it; different scenes, scenarios, and moods evoked in the manga that seem to echo in my mind. This has to speak to something that the manga did far above its peers, dwarfing its competition with ease from beginning leading all the way up to the end.

You'll note that, despite me critiquing a manga, I have nary a mention about the artwork or the dialogue. It's mostly because there isn't much to say when you're looking at something that executes on its fundamentals so well. How many ways can I say that the visuals are so breathtaking that they can actively haunt you? How does one express the raw beauty in loneliness the manga so often captures in its full-page spreads, or single frames that demand your eyes to study it while the story begs you to keep reading? How does one explain the ugly, disgusting reality of the bleak, violent world put to page, one that continually defies your expectations over what visuals you expect to see? What do you even say better than the plain yet contemplative philosophy laid out by the characters themselves? If anything is to be questioned in I Am A Hero, it is certainly not the art or dialogue.

Sure, I Am A Hero has its flaws. It really likes to pander to the otaku identity of the protagonist, leaning very heavily on the fact that many people are expected to relate to him. A lot of the jokes about Suzuki also being a licensed gun-owner in Japan or a polite individual in a polite society, while chuckle-worthy, do start to wear thin as he parrots the same lines a few times every volume. We get it, bro, there are lots of laws about guns in Japan; yes, okay Japan is a very polite, lawful society, but you don't ACTUALLY have to apologize for everything you do or report yourself to police for every crime you commit in a survival situation. The narrative can also go on tangents here and there. I do like how they further contextualize the story on a broader scale, and the tangents are NEVER boring, and always engrossing. But there were a few times where the narrative perused some new, legitimately interesting characters, but left me turning page after page hungry to know what happens to the main cast, frustrated that I wasn't getting any resolution on their condition or safety, like some bizarre, chapters-long cliffhanger.

But for the sheer ingenuity, the desolate beauty, the cruel philosophy, and the bizarre science-fiction that I Am A Hero is able to concoct, I can only come to the conclusion that I Am A Hero is so close to perfect, that the less than stellar parts are still light-years ahead of any other manga or piece of media even closely related to it. I Am A Hero shoots for the moon, and some might say it misses in its attempt, but the journey the manga will take you on still has it on a trajectory that's out of this galaxy, leaving you with the contemplative acceptance that the journey this manga takes you on is far more amazing than any destination it could have reached.